Café Bonjour-Hi a ‘kind of funny’ name for a shop

There’s little doubt about what greeting customers will hear when they enter Dave Plant’s soon-to-be opened Café Bonjour-Hi, even as the Quebec government looks for ways to ban the popular bilingual greeting.

Plant, 32, chose the name about a month and a half ago, after an employee of his other restaurant jokingly suggested he name his new café after the phrase that has become an unlikely lightning rod in the debate over linguistic rights in the province.

“It’s a touch controversial, it’s bilingual — and we’re going to be in a bilingual neighbourhood, so that’s important — and I just thought it was kind of funny,” he said in a phone interview.

Plant thinks it’s quite amusing that he and his yet-unopened café have unknowingly become symbolic ambassadors against the government’s proposal.

But Plant is willing to embrace it, given that he already spends much of his day chatting about current events with the locals and tourists who frequent his existing restaurant, Bouffe Dave Plant Food.

“I enjoy talking politics and discussing and debating, so I’m cool with that,” he said. “And the staff in the café is going to be bilingual anyways.”

Plant isn’t losing any sleep just yet over the possibility of government action against his chosen greeting.

On one hand, he finds it “troubling ” that the government seems to want to limit what language people use when greeting one another, and feels any law along those lines would be unconstitutional, unenforceable, or both.

On the other, he says the controversy is helping him get the word out about his new café, which is expected to open in November.